The End of History
by ncfan
Summary: AU. "You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Move on. Walk forward into the light." .: Ishida x Orihime :.


**Characters**: Orihime, Ishida**  
Summary**: AU. "You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Move on. Walk forward into the light."**  
Pairings**: Ishida x Orihime**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: Slight spoilers for Hueco Mundo arc**  
Timeline**: None specified; post Hueco Mundo arc**  
Author's Note**: For those of you familiar with literature, yes, the summary quote is from the last page of _The Poisonwood Bible, _written by Barbara Kingsolver. Such a wonderful book. I cut out the two sentences before "Move on"; they weren't relevant. Hopefully, it won't be considered utter sacrilege to attach something as beautiful as _any_ quote from _The Poisonwood Bible_ to my unworthy odds and ends of fanfiction.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

_She was dreaming again, of a vast, gray expanse of water, its surface smooth and unruffled as glass. The water stretched out to the horizon and beyond, an endless sea that lapped against the shore below, at the base of the hill. For some reason, she kept expecting a ship to come to port upon the soft white sand and dull, green-gray wiry turf, but no ship came, no billowing white sails appeared on the horizon._

_The sky was blanketed with an opaque canopy of smoke gray clouds. They were reminiscent of storm clouds, but there came no clamorous thunder or lightning; the cool air was only slightly punctuated with a languid, halfhearted breeze. Everything was overcast and dull, pallid without the light of the sun._

_Then, the curtain parted, rolling back in places to allow shafts of brilliant silver light to shine through. She gasped at the sight, and was dragged back through rushing water once more…_

.x.X.x.

When she woke up, she was inordinately relieved to see that she was waking up in the same place where she had laid down her head the night before, when the crickets had been strumming, the humidity too much for them to display any real energy. She didn't know why this was such a concern to her, just had the deep, unreasoning fear that one day she would wake up in an unfamiliar place and have no idea as to how she had gotten there. The thought of captivity terrified her, sent cold washes down her spine.

It was late spring, mild to the extent that she could weather the elements without suffering any ill effects, mild enough that she could sleep outside (provided it wasn't raining), under the stars, without growing cold. The grass was soft and springy, comfortable to lie on, a sloping bank that led down to the rushing waters of a stream, waters crystal clear and shockingly cold. For some reason, this surprised her, because she had expected any running water she came across to be murky and polluted.

Her name was Inoue. There had been a time when she hadn't even known that, but now, memory of her name (be it a family name or a given one) had floated back to her, even if nothing else had. She now had a name to put to the face that stared back at her when she dipped her cupped hands into the water, gulping down a mouthful of cold, clear water.

She had died. She was dead. Inoue knew that much. When she had first woken up, on a dusty roadside with red dust clogging her mouth and nose and making it almost impossible to breathe, an older woman, one of the many traveling the road, helped her to her feet and told her where she was.

"_Are you alright?" Before Inoue knew what was happening, a hand placed itself under the crook of her arm and pulled her to her feet._

_An older woman, her skin starting to loosen at her neck and knuckles, frowned concernedly at her, lips puckered. "Are you alright, child?"_

_Inoue frowned, staring around, disoriented, touching one of her jeweled hairpins for comfort. _Wait… Why am I wearing jewelry? _"Where am I?" were all the words she could force out, though there were so many more waiting on the tip of her tongue. She coughed, sneezing on the red dust in her mouth and nose. Her eyes watered._

"_This is Soul Society, where, when the physical body dies, a soul goes if there is one available to guide them here. You have come to the forty-second district of Eastern Rukongai."_

Upon Inoue's discovery that she had no recall of her life, the woman's faintly lined face slackened in sympathy, brown eyes filled with pity.

"_It happens, my dear. Not very often, but it does. Memory loss is never permanent; it may take some time, but eventually, it will all come back to you."_

Oddly, it wasn't being dead that bothered Inoue. She had thought that she would be upset to discover that she was dead, but found only detachment in place of sadness or melancholy. Death was decidedly bereft of any poignancy if she was unable to remember anyone to miss their presence in her life, or worry about them after she was gone.

No, it was the fact that she had no memories of the life she had led before that bothered her, down to the fact that she couldn't remember her given name. It was… unsettling, to say the least, to be walking around with a giant hole in her, an emptiness and blank space where experiences should have been, but weren't.

And as much as Inoue wanted to remember, didn't want to just be wandering through the afterlife without any idea of what she was doing or how she had gotten there, there was a faint inkling of awareness. It sent a shiver down her spine as she stood up, brushing her long auburn hair from her face, not caring if it was slightly mussed.

Maybe she didn't really want to remember.

Inoue sighed. She was hungry again. She would have to head down the road to inhabited part of Rukongai; searching for the memories locked in her head could wait until she had a full belly again.

.x.X.x.

Inoue saw the red dust cloud rising from the road long before she spied the road itself. There were often many travelers on the road heading to civilization in the forty-second. Maybe she would be able to talk to someone about getting some food. Her small smile widened ever so slightly as she waded through the field of slightly parched, knee-high grass (Inoue had been in Rukongai for about a week, and had not seen rain the entire time), only occasionally broken by trees, towards the earthen road.

Today there was, among many others, a family with several small children, on the road. The four children didn't bear even a distant resemblance to each other; Inoue guessed they were a foster family, bound together through the low probability of any of them ever seeing their family and loved ones again.

Inoue felt a slightly sick feeling settle over her stomach, and it wasn't from the pall cast by hunger. _I could be walking past relatives of mine right now, and never know they were there. How long will it be before I can remember again? _Do _I want to remember again?_

She reached up to touch the hairpin at the right side of her head, and readjust it. Her hand met hair.

Flinching, stomach churning, Inoue jerked around, not minding the path of several ox-drawn and cattle-driven carts rolling down the road. _Ohh… It must have gotten loose somewhere. _She had no idea why she attached so much importance to a little trinket, but still, her eyes scanned the road and the field for bright flashes of emerald green.

"Excuse me… I think you dropped this." A quiet voice sounded in her ear, and Inoue smiled brightly as she turned and found a fellow traveler holding out her missing hairpin in the palm of his outstretched hand.

"Oh, thank you!" Inoue's smile turned rueful as she slid the hairpin back above her right ear. "They're always coming out these days, no matter how tightly I put them on." She let out a nervous little laugh, turning to a small cough from the dust of the road.

"You're welcome." The young man opposite her gave her an odd look, eyes narrowing. "Do I know you?"

Just as Inoue was about to answer, a shout came from behind them.

"Get out of the way!" the driver of a cattle-driven cart roared, not willing to give way to any pedestrians; the cattle were lowing thunderously, hoofs plodding against the earth. Inoue and the boy with her quickly hopped off the side of the road, into the grassy ditch and under the shade of a leafy birch tree.

Inoue peered closely at the boy once she had caught her breath. He was, like her, edging close to adulthood, but wasn't quite there yet; sixteen years old, seventeen at the most. He wasn't particularly tall, even if he did have several inches of height on her, and he was just as slightly built as she was. The teenager (Inoue was assuming he was still a teenager) was pallid almost to the point of appearing sickly, had slightly hollow cheeks, dark hair and wore glasses. He was at once observant and wary, seemed ill at ease with his surroundings. He looked familiar somehow, but Inoue didn't recognize his face.

She shook her head slowly. "No… I don't think so." Inoue smiled apologetically. "You seem familiar, but I don't know you. Then again, I don't remember much of anything—" again, with the nervous laugh; was that some sort of twitch? "—so I could probably pass my own mother on the street without recognizing her."

Inoue extended a hand to shake. "Anyway, I'm Inoue. Pleased to meet you, and thank you for finding my hairpin."

He wasn't smiling, but at the same time, there was no expression on his face that made Inoue think he was upset. After a long moment, he shook her hand. "Ishida… likewise."

As they were walking up the road, Ishida turned curious blue eyes on Inoue, tipping his head slightly. "You said you can't remember anything, didn't you?"

Inoue nodded, willing to admit it. "Nothing beyond my surname, I'm afraid. It's getting a bit exasperating. Are you having memory issues too?"

The faintest hint of ruefulness entered his voice. "The same as you. I've got nothing beyond my family name."

"Nothing?"

"No. No idea of what I'm doing here, what my life was like before, nor," Ishida added dryly, and Inoue frowned, finding she had expected it, "how I ended up dead in the first place. I'm looking for work back in the inhabited section of the forty-second, so I can pay for food." He shrugged noncommittally. "Have to eat, I suppose."

"I have the same problem." A light dawning behind Inoue's eyes, she proposed cheerfully, "Why don't we look for work together? It might be easier that way."

Ishida stared at her as though she had suddenly grown a second head or as if she had contemplated out loud sprouting wings and using them to fly all the way to the moon. "Are you serious?" he asked incredulously, the veneer of politeness he had worn before abruptly dropping; Inoue found that she liked him rather better this way.

Her lips twitched inquisitively as a bird swooped low overhead, letting out a harsh, raucous cry. "I don't see why I shouldn't be."

"But we just met," Ishida spluttered. "And for all you know, I could be some sort of…I don't know, an _axe murderer_ or something!"

"You seem alright to me." As she was pulling him by the wrist through the crowd, Inoue looked back and asked teasingly, "Why? Is there something I should be concerned about?"

Ishida was plainly capable of recognizing a loaded question when he heard one, so he didn't answer. The unappreciative look he sent her confirmed Inoue's suspicions. Instead of answering, he asked, in a tone that indicated he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer, "Are you always this trusting?"

"I don't know, remember?"

"Oh, right. Sorry." After about a minute of their navigating their way around throngs of people and driven carts, Inoue heard Ishida muttering, "If she really is so trusting… Disaster waiting to happen… Better stick around, just to make sure she's alright."

Inoue's smile widened.

.x.X.x.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, peaked, and began to sink, neither Inoue nor Ishida had any luck finding work amongst the village, but one of the women there was kind enough to supply them with a bag of rice. Judging from the size, it would probably last them about three days if they took small portions at meal time.

"I wonder why this house was abandoned," Ishida mused, as he stared up at the ceiling. "The wood's gone soft in places, but in places like this that isn't a good enough reason to just up and move."

The house that they were staying in was at the edge of the village, at the mouth of a pine forest, and had been abandoned, so the woman who had given them the rice said, for the last three months. Everything that had been in the house had been left behind, down to the pallets on the earthen floor of the room apart from the kitchen and the eating utensils and plates and cups. The quiet that permeated the small, one-story house was genuinely eerie, and Inoue herself got the feeling of eyes on her back whenever she let her guard down.

Inoue was inspecting the cast-iron, wood-burning stove; Ishida was still exploring the house, inordinately absorbed in his inspection. It seemed to be in working order. She got some of the firewood sitting beside the stove and tossed it in. In the wooden chest containing tin cups and ceramic bowls, there was also a book of matches. She frowned, and then remembered that she'd seen a well nearby.

Inoue had recently, _very _recently, discovered (or simply rediscovered) a love for cooking. _Well, this shouldn't be too hard_, she thought with simple pleasure, retrieving the necessary supplies and casting an eye to the iron grill on top of the stove.

Within a few minutes…

It was the smell that had drawn Ishida back into the kitchen, brow furrowed. "Is something burning?"

Inoue was frowning contemplatively over the rice bowl on the stove; Ishida gently brushed her aside and, peering intently into the ceramic bowl, muttered, "This would appear to be the problem." Using the ends of his sleeves to shield his hands, he took the white ceramic bowl, bordered with square blue patterns, off of the iron stove, tipped out the excess, steaming water onto the ground, and gingerly set down the bowl.

"That wasn't done!" Inoue protested.

Down on his knees over the bowl, Ishida looked up, his expression torn between an apology and utter exasperation. "I think you'll find that it _is_ done, Inoue-san. And then some."

On closer inspection, Inoue could see, to her chagrin, that most of the rice grains had turned a pale brown; some closer to the edges of the bowl were charred black. "Oh…" She sighed, sitting down and staring gloomily at their meager meal. "You know, I thought it took longer for rice to cook."

Wincing, trying not to offend her, Ishida delicately remarked, "That depends on the intensity of the flames it's being cooked over." He sniffed the rice. "It's still edible. I think."

Inoue pulled two smaller bowls and two pairs of chopsticks out of the chest. "Maybe I should let you cook next time."

As Ishida was sweeping his portion of rice into a bowl, the ends of his lips curled up in a smile, as though he was unused to the action. "Perhaps."

.x.X.x.

While they were eating, the woman who had given them the rice let herself in, giving the rafters of the house a slightly leery look. She adjusted the collar of her brown yukata self-consciously. "So, are you both settling in alright?" She seemed to be under the erroneous impression that they were there to stay, but Inoue didn't bother correcting her.

"Yes, ma'am." Ishida looked up at her, a curious gleam sparking in his eyes. "If you don't mind telling me, I never did find out why this house was abandoned. Why did the family here leave so suddenly?"

She answered readily enough. "Simple. They never left at all. They all died of plague, about three months ago."

Inoue continued eating, unfazed, but Ishida nearly choked on his rice.

.x.X.x.

_Once more, when Inoue slept, she was transported to a far, distant shore. Everything was the same as she had left it. The clouds were gray but not ominous, instead simply gloomy in a wise, pensive sort of way; the sea was smooth and calm as silver glass. Inoue's feet hit springy, gray-green turf, and an unenthusiastic breeze whispered through the strands of her long reddish hair. Shafts of light made the surface of the water sparkle like the scales of a trout._

_Wait… There was something different. Far off in the distance, where the waters met the sky canopied with hoary shrouds, there was a speck of white._

_After a moment, Inoue realized what she was seeing. Not a gull, nor another white seafaring bird, but the sails of a ship, billowing fully despite the languor of the wind._

.x.X.x.

After three days, the rice had run out, the pitiful grains counted and consumed with penurious care, and it was time to move on towards the next town. There was still no rain, and the wind sang through tall, yellowing grasses like the music of wooden wind chimes on a lazy, humid evening. The heat was almost suffocating.

"Don't you want to remember anything?" Inoue turned her eyes away when Ishida drew her secrets out into the light of day, either merciless or just unaware of what that did to her. It made her tremulously nervous, and instead, she chose to focus, morbidly, on the sight of a tawny russet fox devouring the flesh of an unfortunate rabbit. Bloody strips of flesh and long hanks of pale gray fur littered the depression of grass and hung from the fox's incisors, the smell of entrails and death hitting the back of her throat the way one rang a gong.

It was Nature's way, even after Death. The rabbit was devoured. The fox would eventually either die or be devoured itself. The fox's remains would nurture the earth, and no one would ever remember.

"Do you?" She attempted to avoid the subject for as long as she could, throwing his question back at him.

Ishida nodded earnestly, face even more serious than usual. "Yes. It'd be nice to at least know my given name again. Don't you want to remember, Inoue-san?"

Hesitantly, the girl ventured, "I'm not entirely sure why it's so important to remember."

"It is important," he asserted firmly. After a moment of hesitation, Ishida shed his laconic nature like a snake shedding its skin and went on, "Memories make us who we are. We aren't ourselves without them." His eyes narrowed, staring straight ahead and not casting in Inoue's direction. "You never know. You and I could have entirely different personalities under normal circumstances."

Personally, Inoue highly doubted that. She suspected that, even with their memories intact, Ishida would still be quiet and constantly endeavor to be the voice of reason (something he wasn't always very good at), and she would still be a mostly cheerful person and a bad cook.

"But what if you don't really want to remember?" Inoue ventured, staring up at the other's narrow face. "What if you're afraid of what you'll remember?"

The look Ishida gave her was one of sympathetic understanding, but his words said that his position remained unchanged. "No one goes through life without experiencing things they wish they hadn't. But you know, I've been talking to people, and from what I can ascertain, this process isn't voluntary. Eventually, we will remember, whether we want to or not."

"I know that," Inoue replied with more than a hint of uncharacteristic testiness rising like bile from the base of her throat. "It doesn't mean I like it."

.x.X.x.

By afternoon, Inoue's mood had lightened. Ishida watched as she eagerly accosted passers-by on the road (of which there were many), asking if they could help her learn the identity of the flowers, plants and trees on the roadside. The scene seemed uncannily like something Ishida had seen before, but every waking moment of his afterlife had felt like a huge rendition of déjà-vu since he had met Inoue.

Ishida watched Inoue converse and interact flawlessly with the three small children traveling with a fair-haired man; they'd gotten ahead of Ishida by about fifteen feet. He couldn't help but marvel at how adeptly she acclimated to others, especially small children. Ishida himself didn't possess that gift; he had warmed to Inoue, but to none of the others he had met in Rukongai.

She seemed like such an innocent, but Ishida knew she wasn't, knew far better than to think she was. Inoue didn't sleep well, often slept fitfully, as though she expected her safety to be snatched away from her at any moment. Ishida, a light sleeper himself, could often hear her tossing and turning from across a room or a camp fire. She was possessed of a strange, innate knowledge that lent her intelligence, if not wisdom. Then again, Ishida couldn't make any claims to wisdom himself, so he had no room to complain.

One of the children, a towheaded boy, whispered something in Inoue's ear, and she laughed, thick sooty lashes coming down over her brown eyes, skin crinkling up in smile lines.

_This all seems so familiar, but I can't tell how. I feel like I've seen all of this before._

A bright flash of emerald green caught Ishida's eye, and he sighed, prying Inoue's jeweled flower hairpin off of the ground, before running to catch up with her and the others.

"Inoue-san." She turned around, eyes politely inquisitive. "You dropped your hairpin." Ishida forbore to add, _"Again"._

"Thanks." Inoue smiled prettily as she slid her hairpin back in, and the color rose in Ishida's face, despite himself.

Inoue soon changed the tack of the conversation, grinning up at Ishida. He couldn't help but feel slightly apprehensive; Inoue grinning in such a mischievous fashion could _not_ be a good thing, as much as Ishida knew that if he stuck his hand in a fire he would be confronted by intense pain and the smell of cooking flesh.

"Why don't you smile more?" Inoue asked, trying to sound innocent and innocuous; Ishida wasn't fooled. "You know, like this." Inoue took her two index fingers and used them to curl up the ends of her lips. It was just a little grotesque.

Skipping around the issue, Ishida remarked, the undertow of his voice sifting through humor though the upper levels were perfectly neutral, "Well, Inoue-san, I'm glad to see you're back to your charming, cheerful self."

She scoffed, catching the eyes of the three children, two boys and a girl. "I mean it! You have a nice smile; you should wear it more often!"

Feeling the need to defend himself, Ishida riposted, "And what if I'm not much of a "smiling person"? I don't have to smile to show that I'm not upset."

"Will you please just smile? For me?"

The look she was giving him, one of almost theatrical injury, made Ishida roll his eyes and turn his face away to hide the almost incredulous smile that flickered over his face in an instant. "Oh, God."

At this point, the three children decided to get in on the act, clustering around him and giving him the same look that Inoue had been shooting at him, but considerably more melodramatic and not pulled off to quite as skillful effect. The words out of their mouths were the same. "Come on, just smile."

Ishida felt the need to meet the eyes of their father, mouthing _'Help. Me.'_

The fair-haired man laughed softly. "Come on, children. Leave the young man alone."

.x.X.x.

Inoue woke suddenly, tossing her head slightly and frowning, eyes blurry. She didn't at first know where she was, but soon, it all came back to her.

They, she and Ishida, had, when it got dark, gone to sleep under an oak tree a little ways off the roadside, so they wouldn't be spotted by any night travelers in case they meant ill intent. They had lit no fire, since the drought still persisted, and simply just gone to sleep there.

She couldn't remember what she had been dreaming about. As much as Inoue's mind was screaming for her to remember, that it was important, but she just couldn't remember, couldn't recall her dream or why it was so important. Her consciousness was too bleary to process and move into action.

It was still dark, but in the very far-off distance a deep, fuchsia light was starting to gather at the base of the horizon. Stars were beginning to fade back into nothingness.

Ishida hadn't woken up when she had. While he was, like Inoue, a relatively uneasy sleeper, but the night before he had been just as exhausted as her after a full day of doing nothing but walk, without any food to sustain their traveling. Exhaustion tended to lend itself to heavier sleeping than what was characteristic. Inoue could just barely see the outline of the bag full of things they had brought with them from the abandoned house

For some reason, when she looked at him, Inoue expected to see something different than the exhausted blankness on Ishida's face. She was expecting to see him full of a drained, weary knowledge, instead of just stained with tiredness. She got the feeling that her dream had something to do with it.

Inoue frowned. She felt…different herself, straining against intangible bonds. Before, she had been _tabula rasa, _the blank slate. Inoue had been happier as the blank slate. She felt drained and exhausted, and not just from traveling. This reached to her bones and deeper still than that, penetrating the furthest corners of her heart and mind.

Now, she was the bird with clipped wings. Inoue had no basis for thinking of herself as such; she simply knew it to be so. The bird with clipped wings, whose feathers were finally starting to grow back, in a haze of agony and blood and a sea of tears.

Inoue liked it far better when she had been the blank slate, something for new beginnings and maybe a measure of happiness. She had the feeling that, before all of this was over, there would be many more painful revelations at hand.

.x.X.x.

It was a scene that somehow managed to evoke in Inoue the conflicting emotions of sympathy, slight irritation and guilt.

Inoue supposed it would have happened sooner or later. There would always be men who thought that harassing women they didn't know made for good entertainment. The end result, however, was not what she had had in mind.

"Just for the record," Ishida muttered, eyes glazed, "I would like to assert that chivalry is _not_ dead."

Inoue knew she shouldn't have been surprised. The man had been twice his size and looked like he could rip out a tree trunk with his bare hands. Ishida, on the other hand, was a scrawny, not terribly big teenage boy. This was always the end result in such things.

He had fallen back onto the dusty street, glasses knocked off to God knew where. The crowd gathered around had started to disperse; there was nothing to see anymore. The other guy was certainly long gone.

Inoue rolled her eyes at Ishida's statement. "Yes, well now "Chivalry" appears to have gotten a nosebleed and a split lip for his troubles."

She drew out a white handkerchief she had gotten from the abandoned house, and reached out to dab the blood from his face. "Hold still," Inoue said softly.

Ishida did _not_ hold still. The moment her fingertips touched his skin, he jerked away as if burned, pale face flushing a deep shade of crimson before he could push the color back down. His long bangs shielded his eyes, keeping Inoue from making eye contact with him.

"Here." Inoue pressed the handkerchief into his hand, suddenly highly uncomfortable and glad she couldn't see Ishida's eyes. She stood up, and started to look for Ishida's glasses. He was going to need them, if he wanted to see more than a few feet in front of his face.

The missing eyeglasses had landed about ten feet from their owner. They seemed to still be intact, having had a soft landing on the loose earth. Inoue picked them up and blew on them to get all the dust off. No cracks on the thick lenses, and the frame wasn't bent, either. Good.

Inoue crouched down beside Ishida, who was still in the process of wiping his face clean of blood. "Ishida-kun? Here are your glasses," she told him, smiling gently as she held them out to him.

Ishida took them from her without making eye contact. "Thank you."

After a moment of lip-biting indecision, Inoue leaned over and kissed his cheek, and giggled at the thunderstruck, mouth open like a fish out of water look he gave her.

Inoue didn't mind being defended, but she instinctively disliked being protected. She wanted to fight her own battles. As much as it irritated her that Ishida had taken a fist to the face because another man had been bothering her (her irritation convinced Inoue that she had most likely had an older brother in life), it was still a sweet gesture.

.x.X.x.

_The spectral, unmanned sailing ship was back in Inoue's dreams, closer now._

_It had not yet landed upon the soft white shore, but Inoue could see everything with remarkable clarity. She could see the rigging, the helm, even count the number of stitches on the sails and the number of planks melded together to form the seamless hull. Upon the prow sat a carved bird, wings stretched forth, casting soulful eyes up towards the gloomy sky. The ship cast a tiny wake behind it, disrupting the tranquil sea of glass._

_Staring at the ship, Inoue was torn between giddy anticipation and fear. Something was coming, riding in the keep of that ghostly ship, as a skim of mist descended upon her dreaming land, white and cool, leaving condensation rolling on her skin and skirt._

_A jolt of adrenaline twisted her heart._

_Something was coming._

.x.X.x.

It had been colder that night, the temperature dropping so that the air, though still muggy and humid, was cool and bit at unprotected heels and wrists. Therefore, despite the continued lack of rain, a small fire had been lit, fueled by downed tree branches and dead, dry brush. The silence was resounding, but not suffocating; even the crickets, it seemed, had gone to ground for the night.

Inoue woke up, lifting her head and brushing dust out of her hair, feeling stiff and sore as one could be expected to feel after sleeping on their side on the hard-packed earth. Her breathing began to even out as she remembered where she was, remembered the information that seeped through her mind while she was sleeping.

As she sat up, she could see that Ishida was awake and staring blankly into the fire. The light reflected off of his glasses, gold and blood-scarlet. Languorously, Inoue blinked and asked, quiet and hushed, "What time do you think it is?"

Ishida looked up, startled (he had been so absorbed in his contemplation of the flames that he hadn't noticed her waking up), and in the darkness his blue irises had bled to dark black. "It's not dawn," he murmured. Shrugging, he added, "The sky's been getting lighter for a few hours now."

Inoue tilted her head in concern. "Have you slept at all?" she inquired sympathetically.

"A little bit." He looked away, sucked in his breath. "I haven't been able to get back to sleep since then."

Inoue edged closer to the fire for warmth, holding out her hands just to the point that the flames wouldn't lick her skin. Ishida must have noticed how strained her face was, because he asked, in the sort of tone that indicated he half-feared the answer, "Are you alright, Inoue-san?"

Her lips quirked in a subdued half-smile, shadows carving deep chasms of the lines that appeared when she smiled. "I was… just dreaming. Remembering, about the man who gave me these." She reached up and touched one of her jeweled hairpins, which glinted and flashed in the firelight.

Though Ishida said nothing, Inoue could tell he was curious; he tipped his head up slightly, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose before he pushed them up again, eyes growing more alert.

Speaking only out of a desire to tear down the walls of silence, Inoue recounted what she now remembered, as best she could. "It's… a bit jumbled, just a bunch of disjointed image. We lived together—not like _that_," Inoue added quickly and slightly teasingly, seeing the look on Ishida's face. "He was my caretaker.

"I'm not sure what his relationship to me was. He looked too young to be my father, but he was old enough that I'm not sure that he was my brother, either. Perhaps a cousin or an uncle. There was at least ten years difference in our ages, probably more.

"He had brought them home one day as a gift, and at first, I didn't like them at all. I thought they looked like something a child would wear, which," Inoue smiled self-deprecatingly, "I was thoroughly convinced I was not."

The girl faltered, eyes flickering down to her feet. "I don't know how I came to start wearing them. And, for some reason, it makes me sad." Inoue didn't find it worth mentioning that this only served to reinforce her belief that perhaps she'd be better off not remembering her past life. There was no use getting into another debate about that again.

Ishida had remained silent throughout her tale, his face curiously blank. Inoue frowned, eyes narrowing. He was always reserved when it came to emotional reactions, but he hadn't been this closed-off before; his face hadn't been quite so masklike or guarded.

Smiling weakly, the action plainly forced, Inoue murmured, "What about you? Have you remembered anything lately?"

A rhythmic spasm passed over Ishida's face, and he shook his head, saying "No", in such a way that left Inoue convinced that he was lying.

.x.X.x.

"So, you two are just traveling without any set direction?"

Inoue considered it to be an incredibly fortuitous circumstance that a man driving a cattle-driven cart offered to give her and Ishida a ride to the nearest village. The man was a grizzled, older gentleman with a gray beard and a hat, riding along at a sedate, plodding pace.

Since Inoue had silently volunteered to be their spokesperson, it was she who painted a smile on to her face and answered chirpily. "We're just looking for work, and work's most likely to be found in the towns." She now had to fight and strain to smile even a little bit, experiencing a strange turn of emotions that she automatically masked. Ishida said nothing, noticed everything.

He had not said a word, in fact, since the older man had shouted to them to get in the back of his cart, to the point that the gray-bearded man (whose name was Katsurou) had looked at Inoue and asked if the boy traveling with her could even talk at all.

"_Oh, Ishida-kun's very quiet under normal circumstances, but he's got a lot on his mind right now, so he might talk later."_

Without him saying so, Inoue knew he had a great deal on his mind. While she would have liked some more forthright honesty on his part, she knew that, eventually, Ishida would talk to her about what he was remembering, because she knew full well that he was starting, in painfully slow spurts, to remember, disjointed images and sounds and sensations. It was just as plain that it was equally disquieting to him, as it was to her.

It did hurt a little bit, though. As much as Inoue knew that Ishida was still sorting things out, she did wish he would talk to her a little bit and not just stare, dull-eyed, off into the distance.

"You say that you and your friend are looking for work?" Katsurou called from the seat of the cart, not looking back, though Inoue could imagine his blue-gray eyes turning back, wise and placid as the surface of an unruffled pond.

"Yes, we are."

"Well, I can't afford to keep you both in my employ, but I'll gladly put you both up for the night, once we get back to the village, if you'll help me and my son with our work tomorrow."

Inoue caught Ishida's eye; he had finally begun to start paying attention to what was happening around him. Inoue thought it was a good idea, and said so.

For his part, Ishida's mouth quirked noncommittally, but other than that, he made no expression. "I suppose so. What do you do for a living?" he asked Katsurou.

"I'm a fisherman."

.x.X.x.

When they woke up the next morning, it was to the sight of a small village sitting on the shores of a lake shrouded in mist. The sky was finally showing signs of rain, being a soft cinereous gray with clouds of deeper shades rolling in from the north. No thunder or lightning made an appearance, however, and the breeze was full of the sweet, clean smell of the rain that was falling far off in the distance. Something to quench the parched mouth of the earth, after so long without sustenance.

"The key to this is patience."

They had stopped only shortly at Katsurou's house, where his wife and grown son, a man with a face roughly equating to a forty-year-old man, met them, and the latter, a tall man with brown hair, walked down with them to the still, placid lake with waters like polished gray stone.

Ishida nodded, holding the fishing rod in his hands, socks and shoes left back on the rocky shore. "I understand."

Katsurou snorted beside him, eyes as gray as the lake they stood halfway to their knees in (his eyes seemed to change shades, from an almost maritime shade of blue to slate gray, and everything in between) as he surveyed the water, watching intently for any sign of life. "You're certainly quiet enough. We'd be out in the boat with the net—" he nodded to the beached fishing boat, sails drawn tight against the mast, not far from them "—but there's a tear in the hull and I've yet to find the time to patch it."

Waiting for some sort of tug on the thin rod, Ishida's eye was caught by a glittering flash of vivid, virid green. Inoue's iridescent green hairpins, as she stood further out in the water. Her hairpins were the brightest, most eye-catching thing in that gray, mist-laden world.

Katsurou's wife, a woman with once fair hair gone silver, had given Inoue a clip to keep her hair out of the way while she was fishing, and a bit of twine to tie up the skirt of her green yukata at the knees, to keep it from getting soaked in the water. She was wading, the water lapping against her bare, skinny legs, out deeper in the water, laughed at a joke Fumiya, Katsurou's congenial son, made.

Ishida couldn't hear the joke being made, but he could hear her laugh. Bright, light and echoing, casting eerie ghosts reverberating across the water. Another fogbank was rolling in, higher and thicker than the pall of mist hanging at waist-level.

Katsurou chose to make an observation. "I think I've figured you out. You're one of those children, one of those children who hardly ever speaks. The boy who says nothing, and notices everything. Is that right?"

"I couldn't really be sure." Ishida managed to keep all inflection out of his voice, becoming increasingly uncomfortable under Katsurou's gray-eyed scrutiny. It made him feel defensive, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "I don't talk much," Ishida conceded, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the red-haired girl and instead focus on the level surface of the water, "but it's anyone's guess as to how much I notice."

"You're right." Katsurou managed to surprise Ishida with that mild admission, reeling in a fish, and going to put it in the bucket before coming back. "No one knows you, but you." Then, to Ishida's complete shock, Katsurou's heavily weathered face crinkled up in a knowing smile. "You say you and the little girl haven't known each other for very long, but from what I can see, you seem to be very close. So I have to wonder. Why are you over here, and not over there?"

He answered immediately, bangs shielding his eyes. "Because I have all the social skills of a dead fish."

.x.X.x.

The water was shockingly cold, but it came as no bother to Inoue, who was too busy enjoying herself to care too much about how she might have been contracting a cold at that very moment.

Out in the lake, there was silence, serenity, calm. The water was smooth and unmarked, stretching on for hundreds of yards, before closing to a narrow gulf and opening into another wide mouth. There were brief shores caked with smooth gray stones, flat and circular, before the richness of deep green pines, faded to smoky gray in the mist and the gloom.

All was calm.

Then…

Inoue got a sharp tug on her fishing rod, the tip of the wood bending down heavily. Fumiya smiled. "You seem to have something."

Inoue nodded and smiled; when engaged in enjoyable activity, she found that she didn't have to force her smiles. "Yes, I do."

The fish stuck on the end of her rod's hook pulled sharply and sharply again. Inoue tried to reel it in as its struggles became more insistent. She took a step back. Her foot found contact with a slippery rock.

The last thing Inoue heard before she slipped under the surface of the water was Ishida shouting her name.

.x.X.x.

What Inoue was met with was a water much murkier than the surface would have led her to believe. She could just barely catch sight of glistening silver scales, as the sinuous, curving shape of this fish swam away, bearing Inoue's fishing rod away with it.

She surfaced.

Ishida was gaping down at her, ashen-faced, wearing the most incredulous expression the likes of which Inoue had never seen before, in all remembrance. She couldn't help it. She laughed, the warm feeling bubbling up from her chest, through her throat, and out her mouth.

Ishida, for his part, put his hand under the crook of her arm and drew her to her feet. "Are you alright, Inoue-san?" The fact that his voice came out as something strongly resembling a squeak made Inoue laugh even harder.

"Don't laugh." A frown came over his wan face. "I thought it had carried you off or something."

At this, Inoue's laughter died, and she shook her head at him. "Ishida-kun, don't be ridiculous. There's not a fish in this lake big enough to carry a human off with it. Even if it did take my fishing rod."

Ishida's face flushed scarlet in embarrassment.

.x.X.x.

_Green eyes were on her, belonging to the form of one who was fading slowly into ash. If Inoue watched closely enough, she could literally see skin white as chalk disintegrating into gray clouds of ash._

"_Do I frighten you, girl?" The words were spoken with bizarre softness, no inflection, no emotion whatsoever. He stretched out a hand towards her, and for the life of her, Inoue could not remember his name._

_Inoue knew without knowing that she should have been feeling relief at this sight, happiness at this sight, disgust at his request. But she felt none of these things. None of these emotions permeated her bones._

_Instead, there was only sadness at the spectacle of watching him fade away. There was pity, and the deep knowledge that all of this was a waste. There was no reason for any of this to be happening._

_Inoue looked down at his hand, waxen with coal black fingernails, and hesitated. Her heartbeat came almost to a standstill. "…No, you don't." Her voice trembled; she reached out with her own hand._

_Eyes as green as life itself, yet so lifeless in their dull, glassy nature, focused upon her face. "…I see."_

_She tried to grab his hand, but found herself instead clutching ash._

_There was a deep sadness in her at his passing, and even though she knew that this sadness would soon pass, it shook her to her core._

_She was sad._

_And she didn't know his name._

Inoue woke up with her heart pounding wildly, throwing her eyes all around, expecting to see uniform white walls and a locked door. Instead, her wild eyes were met with the sight of the eaves and rafters of Katsurou the fisherman's attic, lit by the strong light of a lantern, hanging from a hook on the wall.

She let out a small shriek when a tiny bat flew right past her ear, jolting a huge breath of air in her ear. The little brown creature soon disappeared into the shadows at the opposite end of the attic, screeching in such a way that said it knew when it wasn't wanted.

"Yeah… They're not so bad once you get to know them." If the sarcasm in Ishida's voice had been any thicker, Inoue would have been able to cut it with a knife and use it as cake frosting. She sat up, and saw him sitting, back pressed up against the wall, close by. He looked pale and drained that night, as though he hadn't been sleeping at all.

"You've been tossing and turning for a while now… I was wondering whether I should wake you up."

Katsurou had allowed Inoue and Ishida to stay in his attic for the night, since he had no spare rooms to speak of. Shaking the blankets off of her, Inoue decided to let that pass and not ask to know why he _didn't_ wake her up if he could see that her rest was not at all restful.

It was at that moment that Inoue noticed the sound of rain. It was drumming against the tile roof, strong and even. A sustained rainstorm, a thunderstorm, Inoue realized, when the relatively muted but still insistent roll of thunder fell heavily upon the two-story home of Katsurou the fisherman. The drought had finally broken. "How long has it been raining?" she asked blearily, casting her eyes up to the ceiling.

Ishida shrugged. "A few hours, now. I couldn't tell you what time it is." He looked away, his eyes scanning the wall with a terrible blankness. A sharp sigh hit the walls.

So, it had come down to this. Inoue got to her feet, picked her way around the substantial cedar chest and bucket and came and sat down beside him, folding her knees to her chest. "Ishida-kun?" Her voice was very small. "Are you alright?"

To this, he let out a pressurized breath of air, something between a rueful sigh and a faintly contrite groan. "Inoue-san… A couple of nights ago, when I said I couldn't remember anything, I wasn't being entirely truthful. Actually, I wasn't being truthful at all."

Inoue already knew that, but forbore to say it out loud, and just counted herself thankful that he had finally decided to speak.

"I have…remembered something. Someone, actually."

"Yes?" she gently prompted him.

Ishida's blue eyes were glassy and glazed as he said, in a voice barely audible, "My father."

Inoue didn't quite understand. "Well, that's good, isn't it?" Her small smile faltered when Ishida didn't answer. "Ishida-kun?"

A sound resembling a bitter laugh ripped from his mouth. "Ah, yes. What can I say about my father? I can't remember his name, for one thing. We don't look much alike, either; we have the same faces and not much else."

Inoue could guess why Ishida was telling her this at all. To ease the silence, as she had done two night past, but, if this was really bothering him so much, to get the weight off of his shoulders. It would probably be the only time he would ever do something like this.

"Our relationship was… _abnormal_, at the best of times. He was—is—a very distant man." Ishida's glasses slid down his nose, as his expression grew even more masked and impossible to read; he didn't attempt to make eye contact with Inoue. "I can remember now, staring up at him as a child, never saying a word. When he would realize that I was right beside him, he would never look at me. Always through me, or past me. The only time he ever looked at me was when he was angry with me.

"As the years went on, our relationship continued to deteriorate. At times, not a day would go by when we didn't try to draw blood with words as our weapons. If I didn't hate him, I must have come close at times. We argued, constantly; I can't even remember what we argued about, but it must have been bad. Eventually, I left home, even though I knew I didn't have the means to take care of myself. I can't remember anything past that."

Ishida fell silent, still looking down; rain kept falling steadily upon the tiled roof, a sound that had heretofore been lulling and soothing, but now only jarred heavily on the crown of Inoue's skull, a drummer beating too hard upon the drum.

As the seconds slipped by and seemed to grow longer and longer, and it looked more like Ishida wasn't going to resume talking, Inoue reached out timidly to touch the top of Ishida's hand, but just as she started to reach out, his face contorted in frustration. "But you know, despite all of that, the clearest memory I have of him is from when I was three or four, after having a nightmare.

"I must have woken him up, because I can remember him coming into my room with this… stretched look on his face. At first, I was terrified that he was going to scold me, because I knew that, for his line of work, he needed a great deal of sleep to do his job properly—I think he was a doctor," Ishida explained, nodding to Inoue's curious look. "But… he didn't get angry. He didn't say anything. He just sat down beside me on the bed and pulled me into his lap. I thought he would have stayed there with me all night, even though eh had to work in the morning."

Inoue drew in a deep breath, biting her lip. "Ishida-kun…"

"I have another confession to make, Inoue-san." Now, he sounded more than a little rueful, as if he was about to disclose some ghastly sin. "The day we met… I don't normally commit to charitable acts without reason, as you may have gathered."

_Feet hit the road. Feet that didn't know where they were going. Feet weary with long days of endless walking. Feet made weak by the snake of hunger, all ruddy coils, gleaming scales dry and rattling, and golden, slitted eyes, nestling in the belly, a dark serpent with a poisonous bite._

_The last town had held no shelter for Ishida, no succor and no chance for rest. No work to be found, no food whatsoever._

_Now he was wandering blindly, no set direction to it, having nothing but his name and the clothes on his back. He felt burnt-out like the skeleton of a charred house, empty and incapable of sustaining anything at all. And all he could think was that a ship at sail without a course was no ship at all._

Hopefully, there will be work to be found in the next village. _Ishida flinched at another pang of hunger. _I can't go much longer without food.

_Then, a flash of emerald green caught his eye, winking on the ground in front of him._

_A jeweled hairpin was lying face up on the dusty ground. Six vivid green petals formed the shape of a flower, startling in the reddish dust._

This looks familiar… _As Ishida leaned down and picked it up, a sharp stab that had absolutely nothing to do with hunger shot through him. He recognized this, as he fingered the small hairclip, and started to look for the owner in the crowd._

"I'm beginning to see what you meant, Inoue-san, about fearing what you might remember."

Inoue knew what Ishida was asking of her, even without hearing the words spoken aloud. And she couldn't give it. She could not grant absolution. Not to anyone. Not even to him.

.x.X.x.

"I don't see what setting out now will accomplish," Katsurou grumbled. "All that's going to happen is that you're going to get wet, muddy and possibly sick."

The rain had slackened of in time for morning, though the sky was still a deep, rich shade of granite blue, and thunder crashed ominously in the distance. The dirt road had all turned to mud and puddles.

"I think we'll be alright," Ishida said mildly. "As long as I can keep Inoue-san from jumping in the mud puddles," he grimaced.

Katsurou shrugged. "She takes joy in the simple things," he remarked with gruff indulgence, the sort of tone one would take with a child of whom they were fond but still found to be just a little quirky. "You could learn from that," he added pointedly. "Listen, those cloaks we gave the two of you will repel water in case it rains again. You know, like duck feathers."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. They're old, falling apart; should've gotten rid of them years ago. Also…" Katsurou produced a cracked, brown leather pouch, one rectangular fold upon another, and held it out to Ishida "…you'd best be taking this if you want to get rooms at any inn around here."

Ishida opened the pouch and saw the flash and heard the clink of metal coins. "I can't take this," he mumbled, trying to hand it back to Katsurou.

Katsurou glared at him, eyes deep, deep midnight blue this morning, and pressed it back into the teenager's hand. "Of course you can. You worked for me yesterday, even if not much was accomplished without the aid of my boat and your friend lost one of my best fishing rods; consider it pay. Those rooms at the inn nearest here don't come cheap, you know."

Ishida nodded and folded the pouch into a pocket of the oiled cloak Katsurou had given him. "Thank you," he repeated, far more earnestly this time.

.x.X.x.

"When do you suppose it will stop?" Inoue had to half-shout to make herself heard over the rain.

At the ledge of the rock outcropping they were sheltering under, rain poured over the side like a bright silver sheet cascading from a rooftop. The rain had come back with a vengeance, pouring from the sky like the tears of God and a million angels, spilling, it seemed, without end.

"Soon, I hope," Ishida replied to the girl leaning heavily against his shoulder, who remained blissfully unaware of how painfully nervous that made him.

Inoue started to drift off to sleep, but stopped herself before her eyes could fall and be glued shut. She had gotten to the point where she didn't even want to sleep anymore, because she knew that when she remembered, it happened while she was asleep. The very thought made her stomach twist itself into knots.

But she was going to have to drift off eventually. The body would only allow the mind say in whether or not it slept for so long.

.x.X.x.

Inoue was relieved to find that she didn't dream that night.

.x.X.x.

They came upon the inn, as Katsurou the fisherman had predicted, wet and mildly muddy, though not sick. They'd been spared that, at least.

Inoue handled the process of getting rooms from the innkeeper, because, as Ishida had, with sparing eloquence put it: _"You may be too trusting for your own good, but _I _have no social skills."_ Inoue chose to let that one pass on the premise that he was just as tense and ill at ease as she was.

The fact that Ishida had recognized her hairpin the day they met made Inoue think that they had to have known each other from before. When, Inoue couldn't be sure.

Ishida himself had recently fathomed a previously unknown love and talent for sewing. The innkeeper didn't seem to think much of it, but since Ishida had volunteered to hem her overlong yukata, the innkeeper's _wife_ couldn't be happier, and after getting him the necessary equipment, they had gotten down to the preliminary work right there in the small lobby, ignoring the odd looks of other guests who were emerging from the dining hall present for the spiritually sensitive and heading up the stairwell at the side to their rooms.

"I'd do this myself, you know," the innkeeper's wife, a pleasant-looking brunette, chattered, "but I just don't have the time and I never learned how to sew."

"Yes." Ishida nodded absently, grabbing for one of the little gleaming metal splinters—because to Inoue, that was what the pins looked like—off of the wood floor. "Please hold still."

The ebullient hazel eyes of the innkeeper's wife crinkled in a smile. "Were you a tailor in your past life?"

Skip a beat, and Inoue bit her lip as she stared at Ishida, who, for a moment, said nothing. Then, he looked up at the innkeeper's wife with a thin-lipped expression that under other circumstances might have been a smile. "Perhaps."

Inoue let out a relieved breath of air.

"If you keep the yukata down here for tonight," Ishida informed her, "I can do the alterations tomorrow morning."

"That would be wonderful, thank you."

Inoue walked over, and leaned down and tapped one of Ishida's shoulders. He didn't look up, absorbed in his task.

She put a scrap of paper down on the ground beside him. "That's your room number," she told him softly. "Talk to the innkeeper about getting the key."

Ishida, who had a pin sticking out of his mouth, couldn't answer out loud, but he nodded, still not looking at her.

When Inoue got to her room, she immediately collapsed upon the twin bed, an odd choice of furnishing in Soul Society, but Inoue wasn't complaining, as the mattress was almost luxuriantly soft. The room was small, and mostly bare, with a nightstand with an oil lamp, naked wood floors, and a chair in the corner, near the window, which had wood shutters. No hearth, no fireplace, but Inoue didn't need one.

She lit the oil lamp with a match from a match book she had found in the nightstand, and the ignited flame sent red shadows dancing along the walls.

One of Inoue's hairpins slipped out of her hair, and descended onto the mattress with almost surreal slowness. The green petals sparkled with a deep green light in the shadowy gloom.

As Inoue reached to pick up the hairpin and put it, along with the other, on her nightstand, she noticed for the first time, the writing inscribed on the hairpin that had fallen loose.

She held it close to the light, and mouthed the words she saw written on the metal.

'_To my sweet little sister, Orihime.'_

Inoue laid her head down on the pillow, as two small, hot drops of water hit the linen covering.

.x.X.x.

_The ghostly ship had finally beached upon the white shore, and Inoue, clothed in green and shrouding mist, traipsed down the gentle slope, her feet hitting soft the soft, spongy white sand. Her hand traced the wooden hull, tender skin hitting damp, firm wood._

_Then, she was standing upon the deck of the ship, hands braced upon the rails, and an albatross shot pass Inoue's face. Her head snapped around. As she stared at the albatross retreating out over the sea of glass, she could see that its wings were clipped._

How can a bird fly with clipped wings?

_Droplets of black blood_—and how can a bird's wings bleed?—_hit the water like rain, dripping from the mangled feathers._

_And, in that moment, Inoue remembered what had made her a bird with clipped wings. She remembered when she had been a bird with wings as great and white as that of the albatross, and how she had flown to the moon._

_Then, her wings had been cruelly clipped, and she had been caged, until the door was let loose, and her feathers began to grow back, were still growing back in painful throes that held both black anguish and fierce joy. The healing came in spurts, with backpedaling and falls, but it did happen._

_Inoue remembered what had wounded her, what had necessitated the use of masks. She remembered what had made her feel brief joy and happiness, and what had taken all that away. She remembered what had finally broken her, but what had also shattered all her masks and false layers. She remembered what had exposed her to the light._

_Standing on the deck of that ship of tears, Inoue remembered…_

…_She remembered everything._

.x.X.x.

Orihime woke up to the sight of golden sunlight spilling in warm folds through the window with its shutters thrust open wide. The storm had come and gone during the night, allowing the sun to shine again through a watery sheen. The storm had passed.

As Orihime sat up, very slowly, combing out the tangles in her hair with her hands, a dull feeling as heavy as lead settled on her shoulders and spine with an iron grip.

She was Orihime again. Nothing could change that. She was heavy and down on the earth again, wearing her shackles as lightly as she could. Her experiences, her failures, they were all with her again.

_Ignorance truly is bliss._

But as she reached and slid the twin hairpins into her hair with the fluid grace of one who had been doing this for many years now, Orihime smiled. She had been right, saying she was happier not knowing, but she had been wrong to think that she was better off drifting along in the sea of unawareness, just wandering without memory of anything of her past life. However bad certain memories were, there were always enough good experiences to balance it out.

Then she remembered.

Ishida.

.x.X.x.

The door to his room had been left slightly ajar. The room was empty, the bed made almost as if it had never been slept in at all.

Orihime braced her hand on the doorframe, and sighed, then remembered that Ishida had promised to hem the innkeeper's wife's yukata.

.x.X.x.

He was sitting at an empty table in the equally empty dining hall, the light pouring through the tall oblong rectangular windows, the royal blue yukata spread out on the table as Ishida took needle and thread to the fine linen cloth. Ishida poring over women's clothing with needle in hand was both ridiculous and familiar to Orihime's eyes.

As Orihime sat down opposite from him, Ishida, having reached one of the pins he had inserted last night with the needle, took it out and set it down upon the highly burnished wood. His glasses reflected the light, hiding his eyes.

"Sleep well?" The question was spoken with a strange mildness, but Ishida was just as wearily stiff-backed as Orihime had always remembered. Guarded and secretly fearful of letting anyone see past the surface of his skin.

"Can't complain," and something in her tone alerted Ishida to the changes that had come over her, because he looked up, eyes as Orihime recalled. His face was as somber and reticent as it had ever been.

She could see that Ishida, like her, was no longer _tabula rasa_, the blank slate. He was once more his memories, his experiences, his actions, his masks, his wounds, his scars, carrying them all openly with no idea of how to absorb it all back under the surface of his skin. The turmoil taking place just under his skin was palpable.

All that laid between them was back, pulsing, throbbing, making itself heard, and Ishida seemed painfully aware of it as he averted his eyes from her gaze and returned to his sewing.

Then, he forced himself to look up, meet her eyes, and asked, in almost melancholic tones, "How much do you remember?" His voice was once more filled with the drained, weary knowledge that had made him seem so much older than his years. But at the same time, there was the rare stealing of hope across his face. The face that only Orihime had ever seen. The face she had always known.

_"You should go. Find a safe place."_

_"I'll be fine."_

_"I'm not sure that any of us are going to be fine, after today."_

_"I don't need to be sheltered."_

_"...I know."  
_

Orihime smiled her first genuine, aware smile in a very long time. "Enough." She reached out, still smiling, and touched his cheek. "I remember you."

* * *

Okay, this got completely out of hand. At first, I thought the oneshot would only be about 5000 words ore so. As you can see, it got to be much longer than that.

While I'm almost sure that this isn't an accurate description of how amnesia works and how it wears off, I hope you all won't be too mad with me for being inaccurate.

The reference to a "ship of tears" in the final ship scene was a reference to an absolutely heart-wrenching_ Babylon 5_ episode of the same name.

Any way, both Ishida and Orihime having convenient attacks of amnesia led to me playing around with their characters a little bit. It was sort of necessary, because without memories, it sort of makes sense that personality traits would be a little skewed. Under normal circumstances, I don't think Orihime would talk about her brother or that Ishida would so much as utter a word concerning his relationship with his father unless forced. I tried not to make them too out of character.

The mood sort of skipped around a lot, I've realized. I guess I was trying to keep it from getting too lighthearted or too depressing. Also, in case anyone's curious, this would sort of be a scenario in which Ishida and Orihime at least didn't get off of Hueco Mundo alive. You might think it's vague, but I don't think I need to get any more specific than that; it sort of detracts from the feel of the story by getting into specifics by stating how they died.

Finally, I hope you all liked it, that this wasn't hit or miss or that it flew straight over anyone's heads. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.


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